A Rose by Any Other Name Would Be Hard to Find
…it may still smell just as sweet, but if no one can find it, how will they know?
Findability
The central and ultimate goal in indexing is the same as in librarianship — findability. Connecting people with the information they are looking for (and not wasting the time of the reader) is the raison d’être for indexing — and librarianship. Hence, findability.
Understanding readers’ approach to a text and predicting their search terms is what findability is all about. In the case of the indexer, this requires considering synonyms, alternate spellings, or alternate names, that readers might use to search for a specific topic.
Cue the index’s cross reference.
Cross References
The Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed.) devotes a whole section of the Indexing chapter to cross references, when and how to use them, and how they should be formatted.
See References
See references address the various search terms that readers are likely to use, and direct the reader to the preferred term where all the page references are listed. See references are an economical way of leading readers to the information they want and the preferred term in the index is a kind of clue to the reader, indicating the term that the author prefers to use. Here’s an example of a See reference in action:
convents. See nunneries
In the case of multi-author works, or books where one author uses several different words for the same idea (or person), the preferred term may be the one that shows up most frequently in the text. Sometimes more than one term is used with equal frequency and double-posting doesn’t make sense because space is a factor. It may fall to the indexer to pick a preferred term based on knowledge about reader tendencies and the topic being discussed.
If space allows, double-posting might be the best option. In those cases, instead of a See reference leading the reader from one entry to a synonymous preferred term, the indexer just lists (or posts) the same page numbers under both terms representing the same concept. This is nice for the readers because their information needs are satisfied immediately, without extra page-flipping.
See also References
Another type of cross-reference is the often misunderstood, See also reference. It is similar to a See reference in that it does suggest a reader check another term…but(!) unlike its straightforward cousin, the See also reference is present in order to provide “more and different information.”1
One example of when a See also reference might be used:
plants, flowering, … See also roses; gardenias
roses, …
gardenias, …
This (made up and oversimplified) entry for flowering plants may have only general information or may show a longer page range to encompass all discussion of flowering plants, with discussion of more specific plants findable via the cross-referenced terms. In this example, the See also reference should only go from the broader term (flowering plants) to the narrower terms (roses, gardenias).
See also references link related topics that are index entries in their own right. There are rules for how to use them — they can get tricky in practice, and there is such a thing as too many See also references, so it is important to index responsibly and not waste the readers’ time.
So, on that note…
See you later!
* Wellisch, Hans H. Indexing From A to Z. (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1995), 126.
